We finished a wedding out west. I am in my tuxedo and I feel awesome. I was also smashed. The city was 1 hour away. I didn’t care. I was in a tux – We were going clubbing!! Luckily I had some friends at Home Nightclub…
About Home Nightclub:
Location: Cockle Bay wharf, Darling Habour
Website: http://www.homesydney.com
Inside: All rooms except the mid-wall room was open. Main room on the floor, with upstairs balcony area and 2nd bar. Outdoor smoking area connected to this. A 2nd smaller room on the 2nd level. 3rd level are 2 extra rooms. This place is a maze of rooms.
About Homemade Saturdays:
Assessment Time: 1.30am-3.30am
Dress Code: Casual ok. I was wearing my tuxedo from the wedding. You also get fingerprinted and photo scanned on the way in.
Entry Fee / Cover Charge: $25
Guestlist: See website
Cloakroom: Yes, at the bar near at the DJ eng.
Bar: $12 yaberbombs.
Music: House in the main room. Can’t complain, all the commercial house tunes were being played. Actually it was executed quite well here. There was also a saxophone player to add another dimension to the music – much like the Bongo players at Bungalow and Cargo Bar.
Supporting saxaphone player used to great effect with the music
RNB room – RNB of course – but I wasn’t there long enough.
Party tunes and retro at the top level. They seemed to have combined all the rooms into one major huge event.
Crowd: Mixed – Asians, Euros
Atmosphere: Party and vibing in the main room. However the other rooms seemed pretty dead. Especially the RNB room as nobody was there – it was the most dead room of them all. There were a hundred other places where you could have your proper rnb fix – and Home Nightclub doesn’t seem to be popular right now as the place to be for it.
360 from the main podium
Timeline:
Kicked off the podium by the sexist DJ
There are girls up at the front dancing. Drunk old me wants a dance too! I went up and danced for a good 50 seconds. Then I hear a:
DJ: “OI!”
James: (turns around)
DJ: “GET OFF THE STAGE – NOW!!!”
James: (jumps off stage)
Man.. what a cold DJ. Given, he probably has a lot of drunk guys coming up onto his stage, but fuck you anyway Mr DJ, even if you played really good beats. A minute later I have my female friend go up and dance, and there was no objections. Total sexism!!! Continue reading »
“No” I say…. “I hate pumphouse!” I say…
It was Saturday night and my friends really wanted to go here. i didn’t. I couldn’t ditch them.. sigh – I wonder if it’s better now… here we go!
Static @ Pumphouse Review
Assessment Time: 12:15 – 2am
Dress Code: Casual ok. Everybody here dresses up in their dancing rnb/hip hop gear. Baggy pants, MJ jackets, and hats are the norm.
Cover Charge: $25. Discount on guestlist before 11pm I think.
Music: RNB and hip-hop. When I mention hip-hop, I mean lots of rapping, and lots of rnb songs which you can dance your heart to. It was good tonight.
Atmosphere: Average. The place wasn’t packed nor was it empty… in essence it was a bit disappointing as there were people on the floor, but upstairs there were only about 15 people, looking down. you could easily find a place to sit down here.
Inside: 2 square podiums for the dancers, and wannabe dancers, dancefloor to hold a good 100 or so people. Upstairs is the DJ area and another small dance area, but nobody really goes up there.
Walkthrough video:
360 Video
Entertainment: Female podium dancers. Good stuff.
Podium dancers, and a MJ fan with his red jacket
Bar: No shots after midnight. Booyah. This was a huge dealbreaker for my friends tonight. We wanted a place to have shots all night!
Crowd at static @ pumphouse
Timeline Continue reading »
Again, everybody is a great dancer.
Friday RNB Special @ Home Nightclub
A small mention on the radio of an RNB night on Friday at Home Nightclub. The last time I went to a RNB event at Home bar, it went off! Sounds good, so I dragged my friends along. Here we go!
Assessment Time: 10:30pm – 12:30pm
Address: Cockle Bay Wharf
Door Policy / Dress Code: Casual ok
Cover Charge / Entry Fee: $20. $10 on guestlist.
Guestlist: Unknown, but one was available
Inside: Only the main room was open for tonight’s one-off RNB special. Main floor could hold a few hundred people.
Bar: $12 Yagerbombs
Music: RNB. Typical RNB tunes playing. Regulars to sublime trance event only had the upstairs rooms tonight.
Crowd: There was nobody here, but the crowd that was here, was Mixed. Indian, Asian, Black, Aussie, Euro. Our group represented the only asians.
Atmosphere: Dead.
Timeline
Home nightclub – an empty shell
There was no line for our RNB event. Bad sign, but it was early. We walked into the main floor and this is what we saw:
A friend invited me to a little uni end of semester party – with a Pajama theme – sounded great! So I dressed up as a sailor.
U n’ I Pajama Party @ Docks Hotel
Assessment Time: 10:30pm – 2.30am
Entry Fee/ Cover Charge: $25 prepaid, $30/$35 at the door. Alternatively you could have come to Docks Hotel before 9.30 for drinks without paying entry and hung around for dance later.
Occurrence: Once off. It was U n’ I’s (the organisers) first event.
Crowd: Dominantly Asian, and almost entirely of uni students.
Music: RNB, House. The typical Sydney RNB DJ’s attended tonight. Sefu.. and Ace and some other ones for the main area. In the side room/area there was also RNB, but the DJ here also mixed it up with some House music. The King of Pop died earlier today, so there was also a 4 song Michael Jackson tribute in the middle and at the end of the night, which was nice of the DJs. A bit of Jackson 5, and then some MJ songs.
Atmosphere: Pretty good. Crowded as people were let in. Most stayed until 1.30.
Entertainment: Dance off, and an all girls pillow fight. Videos of the pillow fight later
360 Video Inside:
What an acronym!! The University of New South Wales Business Society ‘Be Sexy’ dance!!! Try saying that 10 times. My boss has been encouraging me to use my annual leave, so I took a Friday off and went with a friend on Thursday night!
About Home Bar
Address: 101 Cockle Bay Wharf, Darling Harbour (opposite the IMAX theatre)
Website: http://www.homesydney.com
Inside: Entry is via their side door. It is not accessible via the front bar entrance. When you enter, there is a little foyer with two openings. On the right opening is entry to the main room. The other is a set of stairs that lead up.
The main room is quite large both in terms of dimensions and height. You enter from the back where the bar resides. At the back is a technician (yes, a light and possibly sound technician) The DJ is at the front. The huge Shiny sublime logo hangs as a modern day chandelier. Overlooking the main room on 3 sides is a balcony setup where people are peering down Upstairs is another bar and the balcony peering over downstairs. On Level 2 there is a small room playing trance music. another set of stairs around the bar leads you to level 3 - set of stairs and a tiny room resides where slow house plays. It’s not crowded and it’s quite good music, but it was dead as throughout the night.
The main room of Home Nightclub. Taken from the 2nd level balcony
About BSXC
A once off event, possibly once a year for the UNSW BSOC.
Entry: $10 (1st round), $15 (2nd round), $20 (3rd round). $25 at the door. A relative bargain.
Crowd: Dominantly Asian. It was UNSW, after all.
Atmosphere: Main room – very good. Use of MC had the crowd continually going. Trance room – Small, but there was no pretentiousness when dancing here. House room upstairs – Dead most of the night, but for me, seemed to be the best room, I liked the beats, and I loved the freedom to dance, compared to downstairs were it was packed to the rafters.
Entertainment: I caught a glimpse of some dancers at the front. Don’t know if there were any other forms of entertainment. It was a good way to break things up. No podium dancers at this place, nor podiums to speak of. Continue reading »
Leadup
“ITS A BURLESQUE PARTY TONIGHT! COME!!” Green says
“Where?”
“I don’t know – we are being driven. COME!”
Hmm women dressed in lingerie… check
Hmm a free ride to the city… check
But where was the party at? ……
“Pumphouse” the driver says.
“WHAT!!? Are you serious??” I was just at Pumphouse the week prior. I’m not a fanatic of it and I don’t completely mind going, but visiting it twice in a row was too much for old James. Here we go…
Pumphouse
Location: 17 Little Pier St, Darling Harbour
Website: http://www.pumphouse.com.au
Inside: 2 floors. Top floor was just a gallery / patio section to allow viewing of activities downstairs, and to relax. IT gave the whole place a hall-like feel. Bottom floor was a medium sized floor which could hold probably 70 or so people. Lounges in the back, and two podiums in the middle.
Event: Static
Entry Fee / Cover Charge: $15 before 11pm on guestlist before 11. Unsure about between 11-12am, but after midnight, you pay $25 .
Opening: 10pm-4am
Attire / Dress Code / Door Policy: Casual accepted. Hats accepted. I got in past the bouncers without hassle.
Crowd: Asian
Music: RNB / Hip Hop / House (I didn’t hear any House though) Typical tunes were more on the hip hop side – i.e. none of that slow slow rnb stuff. It was all pumping, it was all good.
Atmosphere: People were dancing, jumping, and people were sitting. I suppose if you were sitting down you wouldn’t have had a good time. There weren’t that many people (its a small place), nethertheless the energy was definitely there.
The view of Pumphouse main floor from the above level
Timeline
A review from a regular patron – mixed feelings:
I was next to some guy in line, lets call him Orange. Orange starts talking to me. He talks about how he used to visit Pumphouse every single week before it temporarily closed. Now that it opened again under new promoters, he’s only started coming back recently.
He said to me, in the ‘old days’ of Pumphouse, if one could dance really well, the hot chicks would come to you. Now, they only come to you if you look good. You can’t even approach any girl without getting brushed off immediately. Nobody cares about the dancers anymore he wails. That’s a shame. It would be difficult to pick up here? He still came here though, as there weren’t any other decent hip hop places to dance to (I certainly cant think of any other hip hop venue – Bamboo is more on the lines of rnb, and Hunter Bar – not for me either)
A female professional dancer!
They finally got a hot female professional dancer, compared to the two men last week. I have a video but its really really small sized:
